States’ next major ObamaCare challenge: Marketing campaigns

posted at 6:01 pm on February 14, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

The extended deadline for states to inform the Obama administration of their intentions for either creating a state-run health insurance exchange, forging a federal partnership, or fully resigning the responsibility to the federal government is tomorrow; nearly half of the states have so far definitively declined to set up their own exchanges and several have yet to decide. In the meantime, another two states have rejected the administration’s oh-so-generous opportunity to sign up for the administration’s proffered Medicaid expansion program:

The decisions by Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Mike Pence of Indiana leave 10 remaining Republicans who have yet to decide on expanding their participating in the federal-state health care program for the poor. …

In Wisconsin, Walker outlined a hybrid approach that involves tightening income eligibility for Medicaid, lifting a cap on a program that covers childless adults and forcing more people to buy insurance through a government-run marketplace known as an exchange.

Pence was not as definitive as Walker, saying that he would not expand Medicaid but asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to allow the state to use its Healthy Indiana Program to serve the expanded Medicaid population.

Not all of the states have been quite as hesitant about cooperating with the Obama administration’s wishes, however; plenty of Democratic-led states have happily signed up for both the Medicaid expansion and have decided to run their own insurance exchanges — meaning that, besides the huge and expensive job of actually creating and administering the exchanges, their next task is marketing the dang things.

How to persuade millions of uninsured, uninformed, and/or wildly suspicious Americans to sign up for health plans this fall? Why, with a good ol’ fashioned marketing, obviously. The WSJ reports:

Some 30 million people are supposed to gain coverage through the Affordable Care Act, and much of its success hinges on whether that many people sign up for the law’s new insurance options. …

Meanwhile, states that back the program have been eyeing the campaign used by Massachusetts to implement the statewide health-care overhaul it passed in 2006. That campaign included fliers and advertisements from state transportation, motor-vehicle and tax agencies as well as a high-profile partnership with the Boston Red Sox. …

Connecticut, meanwhile, is considering tapping into athletics but the state may have to shy away from the region’s pro sports teams because a big portion of the state roots for the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots, while a similarly big portion favors New York’s Yankees, Mets and Giants. …

Helena Foulkes, an executive vice president at CVS Caremark Corp., said pharmacists at the company’s retail stores know which customers lack insurance when filling prescriptions, as do staff at the chain’s Minute Clinics. “There are five million people walking in our stores each day,” Ms. Foulkes said. “We think we can play a role.”

Selling ObamaCare to a wary public is going to be about much more than deficiencies in branding or awareness, though, as Via Meadia points out; the law’s supporters need to convince Americans to buy a plan, and badly:

But the tax will be less expensive than the cost of coverage. The minimum tax per person will be $695 per year. Higher earning individuals will have to pay more: a couple who makes $100,000 per year, for example, will be taxed around $2,025. That may sound like a lot, but the CBO estimates that the annual premiums for the least-expensive plan offered under the new law would reach about $12,000 for a family and about $5,000 for an individual (all figures can be found here).

Meaning that is could very well be bad news bears when a bunch of Americans start figuring out that simply paying the penalty tax can be cheaper than actually purchasing a plan — and the government knows it.

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“Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you,” the president told residents of the Garden State. “First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”

July 2009

Was a bald-faced lie then. Is a bald-faced lie today.

Yet…nearly half the Nation seems to want it happen. Elected this guy…twice…to make it happen.

Any of you all live in Missouri (the new ground zero in the Communist/Democrat plot to disarm Americans from the tyranny they want to inflict on us)? You might want to give your favorite legislator a call.

4. Any person who, prior to the effective date of this law, was legally in possession of an assault weapon or large capacity magazine shall have ninety days from such effective date to do any of the following without being subject to prosecution:

4.
(1) Remove the assault weapon or large capacity magazine from the state of Missouri;

(2) Render the assault weapon permanently inoperable; or

(3) Surrender the assault weapon or large capacity magazine to the appropriate law enforcement agency for destruction, subject to specific agency regulations.

5. Unlawful manufacture, import, possession, purchase, sale, or transfer of an assault weapon or a large capacity magazine is a class C felony.

Americans just need to say no! Either buy what you want or pay nothing, not even the so-called tax. Force the government to enforce a tax law that didn’t start in the House as required by the Constitution or ask the SCOTUS to rule.

Thankfully Republicans hold a super majority in Missouri legislature. The bill has only been introduced and read twice; it’s a go-nowhere bill but designed, I think, to test the waters as we’ve seen numerous bills of similar sort introduced in other states.

…the gov’s that are buckling under because they “would have to for-go the medicade money from the feds and it would affect ‘their’ citizens!” …none of them have a history where the feds mandate something…and then slowly the funds decipate year by year until… guess who has to find the money?…they have never had an expiration date on funds before?…never been told…”there’s nothing in that bill that says or states… ‘Continuous’…hey!…so sue us?!!

Thankfully Republicans hold a super majority in Missouri legislature. The bill has only been introduced and read twice; it’s a go-nowhere bill but designed, I think, to test the waters as we’ve seen numerous bills of similar sort introduced in other states.

Meaning that is could very well be bad news bears when a bunch of Americans start figuring out that simply paying the penalty tax can be cheaper than actually purchasing a plan — and the government knows it.

It bears repeating: they did this deliberately. They want to break the insurance sector and force everyone on to a government plan and death panels. We’re already seeing the progs decry expensive procedures and opine that the sick should just give up for the the societal good.

This president had no problem doing nothing while his own personally picked ambassador died a horrible death…and the only vote in Illinois he did not merely vote “Present” allowed doctors to take living but aborted babies and put them in out of the way places so they could expire…i.e., die.

And he is the bestest darned Progressive since the days of Woodrow Wilson…and you think for a moment Obama and all the rest of the progressives give one tinker’s dam about the elderly, the sick, the infirm being left to die so they can use all that “saved” money for their own super-dooper wonderful progressive green energy and pie-in-the-sky projects?

Me, neither.

It is all part of a grand plan to erase private insurance, private ownership, private ability to defend one’s self, family or property from the noble good intentions of the state.

I had a hard time figuring this out…then it dawned on me.
It’s a mass exhibition of “Democrat Suicide by Armed American”.
I’ll be more than happy to waste a box of .243’s exploding the heads of the Aholes that came up with these bills.
III/0317